Place and pedagogy: using space and materiality in teaching social science in Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

This article responds to recent perspectives from the Global South calling for the decolonisation of universities. Drawing on examples from two post-independence universities in Southern Africa – Sol Plaatje University in South Africa, and Great Zimbabwe University in Zimbabwe – we examine pedagogic innovation in undergraduate social science teaching. In particular, we examine the use of space and materiality as teaching tools in social anthropology. We argue for the promotion of what we call emplacement: such that materiality is not only used to relativise and deconstruct inherited world views about the Global South, in order that views from within the Global South are given centrality, but also such that students can situate themselves as embodied persons within concrete spaces and communities which carry particular social, economic and political histories. We see such a move as a decolonial one, that allows for the creation and maintenance of students as embodied, knowledge-making persons situated within communities, rather than as abstracted individuals to whom academia imparts knowledge created by others.

KEYWORDS:

• Decoloniality
• curriculum
• social science
• anthropology
• materiality

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. We use the term ‘operationalise’ in this paper in keeping with the broader aims of the special issue in which it is placed. We wish to emphasise, however, that in speaking about operationalising decolonial theory, we do not mean a simple, technical exercise: rather, we think to operationalise such a complex set of critiques requires fundamental shifts in academics’ thinking about their pedagogies, and even possibly even shifts in terms of their identity as academics. For further discussion, see Luckett, Morreira, and Baijnath, 2019.

2. A theme park at Great Zimbabwe Monuments, showcasing indigenous lifestyle of local inhabitants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shannon Morreira

Shannon Morreira is an anthropologist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Her research work centres on the anthropology of knowledge, including de/coloniality; migration; human rights; spatial legacies; legal anthropology; education; and the politics and geographies of postcolonial knowledge production.

Josiah Taru

Josiah Taru is a lecturer at Great Zimbabwe University, as well as a Doctoral fellow within the Human Economy Project, University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research work focuses on pentecostalism and state relations; consumption patterns and subalternity studies.

Carina Truyts

Carina Truyts established the anthropology subject in the Sol Plaatje University School of Humanities in South Africa in 2016. Her social anthropology work is focused on nourishment, precarious life, food, biosocialities, and the politics of knowledge. Her interdisciplinary research interests engage in food, well-being, care, the body, temporality, and the complex patterns of kin, capital, affect, and inheritance as vectors that edit life.